Blog | Babraham Institute

14/08/2018

Signalling pathways lead to international success

Nuffield placement student Jiaqi Chen looks back on a life-changing year, which started and ended with projects in Michael Wakelam's lab.

competition | signalling | sixth form

23/07/2018

ICYMI: Racing Against the Clock at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2018

Esther van Vliet, Public Engagement Officer, reminiscences about her week at the Royal Society with the ‘Race Against The Ageing Clock’ exhibit.

epigenetic clock | public engagement | royal society | science festival | ageing clock

23/07/2018

Exploring new ways to communicate science

PhD student Katherine Fletcher took a break from the Florey Signalling lab to learn more about communicating science at the London Sci Comm Symposium 2018

science communication | training | communication

27/06/2018

LGBT+ STEM day – Why show our colours on 5th July

The 5^th July 2018 is the first ever Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans (and more) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths day and the Babraham Institute is showing support by flying the rainbow flag and wearing bright colours. But why are we doing this?

30/05/2018

Babraham Institute welcomes first Daphne Jackson Fellow

The Institute welcomed Dr Irina Abnizova, our first Daphne Jackson Trust Career Re-entry Fellow in October 2017. Irina joined Dr Wolf Reik’s laboratory in Epigenetics. equality4success Manager, Laura Norton, met with Irina to welcome her to the Institute and to ask about the process of applying for a Daphne Jackson Fellowship.

24/05/2018

Exploring public opinion on genome editing - ORION project update

Emma Martinez, Public Engagement Officer, discusses the latest developments of our upcoming work to discuss genome editing with the public

crispr | genome editing | orion

15/05/2018

A Race against the Clock?

With five months down and two months left to create the ‘Race Against the Ageing Clock’ exhibit for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2018, how is it progressing? We check in with Esther, the Institute’s Public Engagement Officer, to find out.

ageing clock | epigenetics | public engagement | royal society | science festivals

20/04/2018

Looking back and thinking ahead – how student engagement in research is spreading

As sixth-form students at Sophianum School finish their projects and present their ideas, Michael Hinton, who coordinates the project, looks back on the year and describes how the collaboration will expand in 2019.

animals in science | epigenetics | secondary schools

By Michael Hinton

20/04/2018

Parliament’s POST notes for Policy

The cutting-edge, fundamental scientific research being performed at the Babraham Institute impacts on a range of policy areas. Parliamentarians often look for researchers to engage with and to inform policy decisions. In this blog Prof. Wolf Reik talks about his recent policy engagement with the Parliament Office of Science and Technology (POST).

parliamentary office of science and technology | policy engagement | post

By Wolf Reik

17/04/2018

Race Against the Ageing Clock – from training to practice

As part of the development of our new exhibit, Race Against the Ageing Clock, researchers Dil and Jo visited the Royal Society, London, in March for some insightful training on engagement through the use of exhibit activities, before putting their new skills into practice at the Cambridge Science Festival.

epigenetics | royal society | ageing clock | cambridge science festival

10/04/2018

Co-creation and Public Dialogues in research and innovation – A workshop for the ORION project

Emma Martinez muses on how a workshop organised as part of the ORION project shed some light onto involving different audiences in creating new value in research and innovation processes.

open science | orion | public dialogue | co-creation

29/03/2018

Genome Editing – How far should we go? A Cambridge Science Festival event

On the 13^th of March the Babraham Institute organised the discussion event “Genome Editing – How far should we go?”. Carolyn Rogers, a 1^st year PhD student in Anne Corcoran's group, was one of the Institute’s researchers facilitating the table discussions.

26/03/2018

Climate Reality Leadership Training

In our latest KEC blog post, post-doctoral researcher Jo Durgan, part of the Florey group, steps out of the lab to discuss climate change and her work across the Institute as a Climate Reality Leader.

By Joanne Durgan

16/03/2018

Passion, enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge at Schools’ Day

Jo Montgomery, a member of the Babraham Bioinformatics group, describes how Schools’ Day projects bring out the best in scientists and students

schools day | schools | secondary schools

By Jo Montgomery

01/02/2018

Cambridge Academy for Science & Technology students find inspiration for their investigations

The ‘Protein Challenge’ project at the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology combines an introduction to key molecular biology techniques and practical lab-based sessions to assay protein activity. Here the students tell us more about what they got up to on their recent visit to the Institute to learn more about our research and facilities

By Guest Blogger

31/01/2018

The excitement of science communication

In November, as part of 360 Science, we invited science author and broadcaster Kat Arney to visit the Institute to talk about her career and offer tips on getting started in communications. Here PhD student Christina Courreges reflects on Kat’s presentation and what she took away from it.

communication | phd student | training | science communication | women in science

17/01/2018

St Faith’s trip to the Babraham Institute

A class of year 6 children from St. Faith's School recently visited the Imaging Facility on campus to learn more about cells. They were thrilled to see the microscopes and detailed images that we can take on them. They also used the microscopes we have as resource for our public engagement programme to look at a range of slides and the nematode worm C.elegans. We received a wonderful thank you letter from each child which highlighted how much they had enjoyed the afternoon.

imaging-facility | primary

By Guest Blogger

10/01/2018

Let’s create an exhibition

In November the Institute heard it was successful in the competitive selection to showcase its upcoming exhibition, the “Race Against the Ageing Clock”, at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London this summer. Esther van Vliet, Public Engagement Officer, is part of the exhibit development team and shares here how work has begun on the creation of the exhibit.

ageing clock | royal society | epigenetics

03/01/2018

Learning to talk about my research

Chiara Pantarelli, a 3^rd year PhD student in Heidi Welch's group at the Babraham Institute took part in a recent Media Training day to help her to build her skills in talking to a wide audience about her research.

phd student | training

25/12/2017

Engagement Highlights 2017!

At this special festive time, Tacita Croucher, the Institute's Public Engagement Manager reflects on the public engagement work our staff and students have been organising and participating in this year.

20/12/2017

ORION @ENGAGE - Esther's baptism of fire!

About a month ago Esther van Vliet joined the Public Engagement team at the Babraham Institute as a maternity cover to work on the ORION project, a Horizon2020 European Commission funded project that aims to explore new ways to open up the way the Institute does research. Her baptism of fire happened last week at the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s annual conference ENGAGE.

co-creation | open science | orion

20/12/2017

ENGAGE 2017 – collaboration and inspiration

Michael Hinton muses on the ENGAGE Conference, run by the National Coordinating Council for Public Engagement

conference | public engagement | training

By Michael Hinton

13/12/2017

A match made on campus

The Babraham Institute’s basic science benefits in a very real sense from the Institute's proximity to a number of industry-leading biotechnology companies on the Babraham Research Campus. In this blog Rahul Roychoudhuri tells us about a developing partnership between our Immunology Programme and Cancer Research UK Therapeutic Discovery Laboratories.

babraham research campus | collaborative research | industry

08/12/2017

Launching Challenge Projects in the Netherlands

Alex Harvey, an Animal Technician in the Institute’s animal unit (BSU) describes how she joined Boo Virk (a postdoc in the Casanueva Group) and Dori Horkai (a PhD student in the Houseley Group) and the Public Engagement team's Michael Hinton in the third year of a collaboration with Sophianum School in the Netherlands.